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Well, since I have absolutely no computer graphical ability, and my RL drawling skills are limited to doodles in the margins of my pages, I've been playing with MS Paint a lot lately, and have redesigned my Mando. Part of it was practicality, part of it was purely visual, part of it was concepts I like. I'm at work, once again, so I can't upload any pictures, but I should have them up when I get home. For now, I'll describe the features you'll see.

Bucket: Dark gray bucket with maroon/dark red T-frame, mandibles, and faceplates, with black cheekbones. Left ear will be a comm assembly with three short antennae, Commander Cody style. Right ear will be a headlamp, and "holo projector" or flickering blue LED. Above the right eye will be a painted list, in bright red, of names in small Mando'a script. These will represent the friends I lost in battle. I'm sad to say it'll probably stretch from the top of the visor frame to the back of the visor frame.

Read in "The Making Of The Force Unleashed" that one of the bosses hunts Wookies, and he's got a belt or a sash made of Wookie fur. Sounded cool (even though I love Wookies, and could never kill one), so I'm going to have a "Wookie pelt" girth belt, knee-length kama, and loin cloth.

Was thinking about adding a cloak (fabric, not fur), but I'm worried that with the kama/loincloth it's gonna be too much flowing fabric. I was looking at Hydra's hood on her Snow Mando, and dug the look (even though I'd have my hood down most of the time).

Armor: Heavy maroon collar similar to the one Ray Ramirez and others have done. For the neck/collar armor, I'm using a mantle type collar, so that that it covers me from back to front, instead of just the front with a tall back piece. It's going to have a gap at the front, just over my ucipital mapillary (the little dent between your clavicles). Along the edges of this dark grey armor, running basically against my neckseal and vest, will be a maroon border.

The dark grey pauldrons/shoulder bells will be of a spaulder type, so that they encase the entire deltoid (shoulder) muscle. They'll be sort of square shaped, and will connect to the front chest plates and the back plate. Planning on putting my clan creed (family motto: Adhaero Virtuti, "I cling to virtue") in bright red Mando'a around the bottom edge of each piece. Will also have two smaller bicep plates.

The maroon chest armor will be the standard two piece with a diamond in the middle setup. I'm going to paint the Mando'a letter for K (which my last name begins with) on each breast plate and on the ab plate, mimicing my family crest (which is three knight helmets in a triangle formation).

Nothing really special about the maroon ab plate, other than the paint.

Right Gauntlet will be my weapon guantlet. I want to figure a way to mimic the "gatling gun" on the GI Joe accelerator suits in the film. I think I'm going to have to get a few sets of ball bearings, attatch them to rings mounted to the gauntlets, and then place PVC "gun barrels" on the outer edges of the bearings. That way it'll spin freely. I'll probably add some sort of lighting inside the barrels. Maybe placing a few bright LED's in one spot so that as the barrel passes by it looks like it's lighting up.

Left Gauntlet will be my "onboard computer". I'm gonna have three screens, one red, one blue, and one green. Each one will be illuminated from beneath, and I'll have a stencil cutout over the top of the lights so that it looks like a lit screen. I'll have a picture of a generic Mando, in a mug shot style pose. Probably several sensor heads too.

No thigh armor, but I'll have squared maroon knee armor, with shin/boot spat armor, both maroon.

And that's pretty much it. If you've made it this far in my ramblings, congratulations. Any comments or input is welcome.